Forums

The forums ran from 2008-2020 and are now closed and viewable here as an archive.

Home Forums Design Critique my portfolio site please?

  • This topic is empty.
Viewing 15 posts - 16 through 30 (of 44 total)
  • Author
    Posts
  • #146450
    chrisburton
    Participant

    Helvetica is unreadable at 12px, thanks for the link @chrisburton. I kind of find all fonts hard to read at small sizes, even the comments on that site, though.

    Helvetica just isn’t that great for screen use or readability nor was it designed for the screen. Arial is just a bad copy attempt although it reads better.

    I have seen chris drop some gems on here so when he says something I pay attention lol. Still waiting for your blog though.

    Thanks, @cwork. I don’t mind if others don’t take what I say seriously. Instead I hope they do the research themselves before blowing me off.

    I’m implementing a custom comment system for my site and I’m running into a few issues. I’ll let you know when I finish it.

    Btw is anyone having trouble staying logged in here? I feel lucky to be able to post this message right now.

    I haven’t noticed anything of that nature, personally. Perhaps it may be ending your login session every time you close out your browser?

    #146451
    alexemorris
    Participant

    Unreadable is a bit of an overstatement. Yes there are better fonts out there, but for now I’ve gone with Helvetica (Neue) until I find something else. I’ll experiment with Benton Sans this week when I sit down and work on my site.

    Like you say, its a bit hypocritical of that blog when its comment typeface is far too small.

    As for the login issues, yeah, I have to reset safari every time I switch subsections of the forum, or it logs me out. Bizarre!

    #146453
    chrisburton
    Participant

    Unreadable is a bit of an overstatement. Yes there are better fonts out there, but for now I’ve gone with Helvetica until I find something else.

    I disagree but good luck with your site!

    I’ll experiment with Benton Sans this week when I sit down and work on my site.

    Great. I think you’ll enjoy it. It’s from Webtype (really high quality webfonts). You can test them before purchasing.

    Note: I agree with you that the comment font size on that blog is a bit too small to read but the article font-size is fine.

    #146457
    alexemorris
    Participant

    Without sounding arrogant, I can see for myself that Arial & Helvetica are perfectly readable without looking through an extremely long document that will tell me otherwise. I’m certainly not the only one that thinks to. The BBC use it as the main body text on their website and which is viewed by millions. Apple have has chosen for Helvetica Neue as the main font for iOS 7 which will be used by 10s of millions. NYC subway used Helvetica as its font for signage, I don’t see anyone complaining that they can’t get around.

    There are always going to be designers that think they know better, maybe they do. I agree there are much better fonts out there, but sitting there and telling me you can’t read Arial/Helvetica is just plain ridiculous.

    However I have a lot to learn and I will have a look through that link another time, but its very late now.

    #146458
    chrisburton
    Participant

    Without sounding arrogant, I can see for myself that Arial & Helvetica are perfectly readable without looking through an extremely long document that will tell me otherwise.

    =/

    Just so you’re aware, Apple received a lot of backlash for choosing Helvetica Neue Light. The following update they changed the weight and posted a job for a font developer. Also keep in mind that Apple’s marketing team had influence in the design of iOS 7.

    #146459
    alexemorris
    Participant

    Yes I know, it was a controversial choice, however since that revision it is still the same font (albeit higher weight). I would have preferred something different, but not because I can’t read it!

    I will have a look on typekit before buying elsewhere as I’m a creative cloud member. At this stage paying for some quality web fonts would be nice but the cost will far outweigh the benefits as very few people will actually notice. Hopefully in the future.

    Thanks for you help/tips anyway, even if we didn’t agree on everything!

    #146460
    chrisburton
    Participant

    It’s not just about you!!! Please keep that in mind. I would have opted for something entirely different as well. In fact, if I can find a way to change it, I certainly intend to do so.

    Remember to choose wisely on Typekit. They publish webfonts even if they render horribly. https://typekit.com/fonts/vinter-web

    Note that Monokrom has optimized Vinter themselves because of Typekit’s auto-hinting algorithm.

    #146464
    John Lueders
    Participant

    Would love an actual designers opinion on my site.

    Looks like you received a lot of feedback from first class ‘actual designers’ about your site. I am not a designer guru but here are…

    My Two Cents:
    1. I believe (as do others) that the font-size of 12px is too small. I am looking at your site on my MacBook Pro 15 inch Retina. My vision is ok (I wear glasses) but I am unnecessarily squinting.
    2. A favicon should be added, rather than the default empty white sheet that appears…will strengthen your brand.
    3. On the home page, in your slider-gallery, I wanted to click on the little circles below to slides to move/select a slide.
    4. On the home page, in your slider-gallery, the second slide ‘Photography’, the hyperlinks’ font color do not appear well do to the contrast.
    5. Wanted ‘AEM Design’ logo to go ‘Home’
    6. In Gallery, I wanted to move through your images with navigation arrows for example.
    7. Clicking on ‘Contact’ is cool…it slides down to show the form. Wanted to close it by click on ‘Contact’ again. A toggle functionality was expected.
    8. The estimator on a phone looks like it needs some @media query css changes…each option should be ‘display: block’ possibly.
    9. Do some soul searching about the font recommendations that you received…these guys/gals are studs…they are not blowing smoke…they are offering true authentic goodwill advice. Going back to your original reason for posting…these guys are the ‘actual designers’ whose opinions you were looking for.

    Keep cranking…I think the site is good and I am sure that you will continually evolve it.

    All the best.

    #146465
    chrisburton
    Participant

    Just to give additional input, it depends on the typeface whether 12px is too small. I am using 12px for my blog using Benton Modern RE (Webtype). The RE series were made to render well between 9px – 18px.

    http://cloud.chrisburton.me/Ql0m

    #146488
    alexemorris
    Participant

    Wow, thanks for all of that!

    A lot of what you mentioned I have been meaning to add and I have just forgotten about or it has broken when I’ve made changes elsewhere (contact closing used to work fine, clicking circles to navigate slider..)

    Looks like I’m going to have to deal with the font issue as a matter of urgency. Will get to work the above today.

    #146497
    alexemorris
    Participant

    Done most of that.

    #146672
    elPostman
    Participant

    I noticed your Portfolio page loads the details for each site in the background. Great from a perceived speed standpoint because each detail loads instantly when chosen. However…your thumbnails are all retina-sized PNGs. The total size for the 9 images on this page was 10.4MB! That’s very heavy and kills the speed benefits gained from preloading, especially when the resulting images are so small. On mobile only the first thumbnails are shown, so this already huge size eats up tons of bandwidth with nothing to show.

    Shrink the thumbnails to the smallest size you can get away with and consider linking to the larger images if you want to show detail. Small changes, huge gains!

    #146695
    alexemorris
    Participant

    Yeah, I noticed this the other day, one of those things I started to fix and got distracted! Something do tonight, it was laziness on my part when coming up with an idea for the portfolio and I never got round to compressing the screenshots.

    #146698
    alexemorris
    Participant

    I’m tempted to preload on my gallery page, however it would be very bandwidth heavy. Mind you the images are served by Flickr.. Something for me to think about.

    #146700
    alexemorris
    Participant

    Less than 500kb now, should have done that a long time ago.

Viewing 15 posts - 16 through 30 (of 44 total)
  • The forum ‘Design’ is closed to new topics and replies.